Uppity-Negro.com

Sorry, conservative though I may be, I can't claim any remote relation to that one. Opposing medical help to anyone is just plain nuts & evil.

Gays and lesbians are already refused medical assistance and/or actively discouraged from seeking it in many parts of the country. Of course, they're always free to stay in the closet, but depending on your reasons for seeking care it might be seriously compromised if you can't be honest with your practitioner.

The situation is really dire for transgendered people. Leslie Feinberg has a really harrowing story about being refused help in an emergency room...I should see if I can find it on the web and post the link. Suffice it to say that when you come in looking like a man and a doctor finds out you're not one, depending on the doctor you could be in big trouble.

So now they're trying to institutionalize discrimination. I can only hope that if such a thing passes it will be challenged in the judicial system and there could be some kind of precedent to prevent either other similar laws from passing or even explicit laws that everyone deserves health care regardless of who they love and/or sleep with.

The kicker is their attempt at co-opting the term "conscientious objection" to refer to homophobic doctors. You're right, evil is the only word for it.

Sorry, meant to say "even create specific laws" to outlaw discrimination.

Shit like that makes me want to just go right the fuck back to bed and stay there. Jesus fucking Christ.

So basically, we'd be going from de facto discrimination and (supposed) de jure equality to enshrined discrimation, followed by a lengthy court battle which would result in. . . the same sitch.

Only after spending, what, a couple years and a few million in legal fees?

Why does this seem familiar somehow?

Jesus wept.

I'll get my activist friends in my home state on it right away.

But, Christ Almighty on a pogo stick . . . does a racist doctor also get to use his 'freedom of conscience' to let a Black patient bleed to death? Not any more -- at least supposedly not any more . . . how can anyone think for an instant that this is different?

Wow.
That's... the most fucking disgusting thing I've heard all week.
That's impressive.

Well, alierakieron, the week isn't over yet.

Um, that's me trying to be optimistic. I shouldn't bother trying, should I?

garrity, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to explain how being black is nothing like being GLBT.

And I'll have to kill them.

Well, crazily enough they clarified that racism point, at least according to the article:

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.

Ain't this some ish. This makes me want to get way postal. So much for Kumbaya.

Here's an excerpt of Feinberg's writing on that hospital story. I think it's from Transgender Warriors:

"I remember late one night in December my lover and I arrived at a hospital emergency room during a snowstorm. My fever was 104 degrees and rising. My blood pressure was pounding dangerously high. The staff immediately hooked me up to monitors and worked to bring down my fever. The doctor in charge began physically examining me. When he determined that my anatomy was female, he flashed me a mean-spirited smirk. While keeping his eyes fixed on me, he approached one of the nurses, seated at a desk, and began rubbing her neck and shoulders. He talked to her about sex for a few minutes. After his pointed demonstration of �normal sexuality, he told me to get dressed and then he stormed out of the room. Still delirious, I struggled to put on my clothes and make sense of what was happening.

The doctor returned after I was dressed. He ordered me to leave the hospital and never return. I refused. I told him I wouldn't leave until he could tell me why my fever was so high. He said, "You have a fever because you are a very troubled person." This doctor's prejudices, directed at me during a moment of catastrophic illness, could have killed me. The death certificate would have read: Endocarditis. By all rights it should have read: Bigotry."

Sadly, stories like Feinberg's are all too common. I recall when a butch friend of mine returned from a visit to the ER. An abuse-survivor, she did not fight back, or defend herself when her girlfriend threw crockery at her for 1/2 an hour. When the police came on a domestic disturbance call, they took my friend to the ER- whereupon the Dr left her locked inside an examining room alone for an hour, BEFORE suturing the gashes on her arms that ran the length of them, because my friend would not admit to being the aggressor [her girlfriend was very petite & feminine]. He said he left her to "think about her story." & locked the door from the outside.